Tuesday, June 1, 2010

Whiskey Wednesday: Booyah Bourye

What, you may ask, is Bourye? Bourye is a unique concoction from the good folks at the High West Distillery in Utah. It's a blend of a ten year old Bourbon and two ryes -- a 12 year old with a whopping 95% rye mashbill (5% malted barley) and a 16 year old with a more traditional rye mashbill (53% rye, 37% corn, 10% barley). High West is one of the few bottlers I've seen that spells out the mashbills of each of its component whiskeys right on the bottle (High West doesn't distill any of this itself but buys whiskey from distillers). Their Rendezvous Rye is one of my favorite rye whiskeys, so I was eager to try Bourye.

Tasting

Bourye, a Blend of Straight Whiskies (Batch 1), 46% alcohol ($60)

The nose is very Bourbon heavy up front, with rye spice kicking in later (keep in mind that while we know the component whiskeys in this vatting, we don't know the proportions of each that are used in the final product). Not surprisingly, the taste is similar to a high rye-content Bourbon. The first thing you get is a sweet burst of corn, followed by rye spice and some chewy, oak notes. The rye takes over in the finish, which goes on and on. This is really good stuff. Sipping blind, I would guess this was a very good high-rye content Bourbon with some age on it, which is probably more or less what it is when you add up all the components.